Bowling For Soup has a well-deserved reputation as being goofy, spontaneous party monsters in concert, but Friday’s Scout Bar show might have strained the Looseness Meter to the breaking point.

“I’m sorry we’re so loose tonight,” singer/guitarist/frontman Jaret Reddick said early on. “But we feel like we’re in somebody’s backyard.”

It probably had something to do with the fact that the crowd of 210 was equally loose, and in an extremely giving mood. Reddick and Teletubby-shaped guitarist Chris Burney spent much of the 100-minute set accepting a steady stream of plastic cups from the audience. Though the Wichita Falls-bred quartet has no qualms about alcohol consumption, Reddick finally said enough is enough: “Please don’t buy us any more shots.”

Chris Burney accepts another round of beverages from the crowd.

Even stone-cold sober, Bowling For Soup comes off as a fun-loving band with the motto, “If we’re having fun, then you probably are, too.” They rarely played songs back-to-back without stopping for several minutes of banter, or played a song all the way through without a goofy interlude. Some examples:

 In the middle of “Two-Seater,” an ode to the joys of vandalizing your ex-girlfriend’s car, they screeched to a halt for a “musically enhanced beverage break.” Reddick, Burney and bassist Erik Chandler retreated to Gary Wiseman’s drum stand for a cold one as the sound guy played Jim Ed Brown’s country chestnut “Pop a Top.”

 A few songs later, it was time for a “musically enhanced photo oppportunity.” Wiseman emerged from behind his drums to join his mates for extended mugging for the assembled cellphone cameras and a few point-and-shoots. All this happened to the strains of the Ohio Players’ “Celebrate.”

 Between-song discussion topics included Burney’s butt-grooming regimen (“do you use any product back there?” Reddick asked), movie trivia, wardrobe notes (If you were at the show last night in Austin, I’m wearing the very same clothes,” Reddick noted, a bit sheepishly) and additional enhanced-break suggestions. Considering the mercury outside had dipped to 25 degrees (there was a thin sheet of ice on my car after the show), Reddick thought it would be nice to add a musically enhanced smores break, complete with fire pit. I’m guessing that might be against the fire code.

Reddick disengages from an up-close-and-personal moment with Chandler.

There was also a discussion of outdoor urination, as Reddick boasted he could do it without using his hands. “If I’m peeing outside, I look like a Creed video,” he said, thrusting his hands into the air, Scott Stapp-like, singing “With pants wide open…” Burney offered a suggested set list for the next night’s show in Houston that would take the band’s Scout Bar alcohol consumption into account: “We should open with ‘1985,’ play three more songs and then close with ‘1985.’ ” And Reddick, after seemingly exhausing every “how ’bout a round of applause” line, added, “And how about a big round of applause for us for showing up tonight?”

The band played the songs you’d expect  signature tunes such as “1985”; the Grammy-nominated “Girl All the Bad Guys Want”; “Ohio (Come Back to Texas)”; and “My Wena” and “A Really Cool Dance Song” from the excellent new album, “Sorry For Partyin’.” But not without interruption. “1985” featured the obligatory singalong, but Reddick also called for a falsetto version (which the crowd pulled off) and for it to be sung in Spanish (which they didn’t). The encore, “Dance Song,” the band’s skewering of rock bands looking to ride the dance-craze train (the Killers’ ears are probably burning) disintegrated into dance-fever chaos. It was left for a roadie to pick up Chandler’s bass and finish the song as the band gyrated offstage.

Other miscellaneous notes:

 The set list: I didn’t write ’em all down ’cause I was busy trying to take pictures, but I think this is how it went: “The Bitch Song,” “I’m Gay,” “Ohio (Come Back to Texas),” “My Wena,” “Almost,” “High School Never Ends,” “Two-Seater,” “No Hablo Ingles,” “The Last Rock Show,” “Punk Rock 101,” Hooray for Beer,” “When We Die,” “Girl All the Bad Guys Want,” “Belgium,” “1985,” “A Really Cool Dance Song” (encore).

 Weird moment: A clean-cut, 30something guy with a couple of Glo-rings around his neck was looking at me funny. He finally asked me if I had once been in Bowling For Soup. Really. I said something extremely clever, like, “I wish.” I don’t have the musical chops. Or the tattoos.

 No cameras? After a few songs, a security guy came over to inform me that the club didn’t allow cameras. This despite the fact that I had checked in at the door, ID’d myself as an Express-News employee and had a “Bowling for Soup photo pass” sticker on my camera bag 10 feet away. And c’mon. The places was lousy with people taking pictures and video. I even saw another SLR in addition to all the cell cameras and point-and-shoots.

 For openers: Due to a prior commitment earlier in the evening (my wife’s school was having its Christmas party), I missed the first two bands, Go Action Team and Junes Not Faking. But I caught second-billed Smile Smile, a keyboard-and-acoustic-guitar duo from Dallas. Keyboardist Jencey Hirunrusme said, “You guys don’t know what to do with us. It’s OK; we’re Canadian,” but later ‘fessed up that they were from North Texas, not the Great White North. Nice harmonies, though.

Apparently, they thought the show went off OK. Guitarist Ryan Hamilton wrote on their Web site, “I would compare last night’s San Antonio show to a first date that starts out a little awkward then ends up being GREAT! Yeah . . . that’s a perfect description. We had a blast!”

 Pick this! A guy to my left spent a good minute as the show ended yelling “Throw me a pick!” No one obliged, so he finally tipped a mike stand over and snagged one of the remaining guitar picks still taped to it.

 Pick this, Part II: Speaking of picks, when they weren’t collecting cups from the audience, Reddick and Burney showed amazing pick-flipping skills. Burney flipped his and caught it, hardly missing a strum. Reddick flipped one high into the air, caught it in his mouth, spat it back out, grabbed it and continued on.

 Got picks? I managed to acquire not one, but two green Bowling For Soup guitar picks. Not by handling the equipment and risking roadie wrath but by noting the stage was littered with them and asking for one. I also found a second one on the club’s concrete floor, so I felt doubly blessed. Sad to say, neither possessed the magical powers of the pick in that Tenacious D movie  my modest guitar-playing skills remain unimproved.

And this just occurred to me: What if one of them was the one that had been in Jaret’s mouth? Ewwwww! Maybe I should have sterilized it first. Although with all the alcohol he consumed, it may well have been pre-sterilized for my convenience.

Burney searches for his just-flipped guitar pick while Reddick emotes.